As we previously reported, on March 22, 2018, President Trump directed the Office of the United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) to take action against China’s “unfair and harmful acquisition of U.S. technology” under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. As a result, USTR has now taken action on three occasions to impose additional tariffs of 25 percent on Chinese imports under section 301, with the most recent action covering approximately $200 billion in imports from China.

In April 2018, USTR announced the first list of products that would be subject to these additional duties under section 301. After allowing interested parties to comment on the proposal and then holding a three-day hearing, USTR announced that it decided to impose tariffs of 25 percent on $34 billion of imports from China. These tariffs became effective on July 6, 2018. On the same day, USTR announced that it intended to impose the same tariffs on an additional $16 billion of imports from China. After holding hearings on this second list in July, USTR announced that it would impose additional tariffs on the products on this list. These tariffs became effective on August 23, 2018.

USTR has also announced that it intends to impose additional duties on approximately $200 billion in imports from China. USTR held hearings on this third list during the third week of August and has stated that interested parties can comment on the list. Parties who wish to comment on the list must file their written comments by September 6, 2018. USTR will likely issue a final decision on which products on the list that will be subject to the additional tariffs within the next six to eight weeks.

USTR has also announced that parties may request that specific products be excluded from these tariffs. At this point, USTR has published a schedule for these exclusion requests only for its first list of products. For the products on the first list, the deadline for filing exclusion requests is October 9, 2018. USTR has stated that it will announce a schedule for filing exclusion requests for the other two lists of products shortly.